Over a third, or 35%, of job offers in Germany are posted at online job portals according to a study from the Federal Employers' Association of Personnel Service Providers (BAP).

The study, ‘Young Germans’, focuses on the living and working world of what BAP describes as the young generation in the temporary employment sector. Approximately 71% of Germans between the ages of 18 and 39 search for online job boards when looking for a job. For 42% of those, German-based career platform Xing plays a key role in job search.

A detailed analysis of the media used to find a job showed that companies seem to be responding to the search behaviour of younger applicants. Data from the study showed that 55% of job ads targeted at young professionals, trainees and interns were posted via online job boards. The report also notes that job offers for experienced professionals were found less frequently in the Internet job boards (36%). In direct comparison, most jobs were advertised through job boards StepStone (77,370 jobs) and Monster (31,450 jobs).

Meanwhile, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) ranks second in the report with about 31% and is mainly used for the recruiting of experienced professionals (34%) while internships positions, on the other hand, were rarely advertised at the BA (under 4%). The BA is used particularly frequently by the personnel service providers and temporary employment agencies as half of job advertisements from those groups were published there.

"This should be mainly related to the fact that temporary work is more open to jobseekers, the long-term unemployed and jobseekers than other sectors of the economy and disproportionately often puts these groups into work," Julia Große-Wilde, manager at BAP, said.

Nearly 18% of job postings were published by advertisers on their own company websites while print media ranked fourth with 5% of all ads.